David Cameron arrived in South Korea tonight ahead of the G20 summit amid concerns that leaders of the world's most powerful nations will fail to agree rules designed to safeguard the global economic recovery, defuse trade tensions and prevent a repeat of the financial crisis.

Gathering on a group of three islands specially built for the summit near Seoul, leaders will spend the next two days in fraught discussions about how to iron out the growing rifts between export-rich countries and debt-laden consumer nations. Protectionism and foreign exchange rates will be central to the debate.

The United States wants China to allow the yuan to rise faster and believes that Beijing is keeping its currency low to gain a trade advantage. But the US negotiators face a rough ride, especially in the wake of last week's new $600bn round of quantitative easing, which has angered many G20 nations, including China and Germany, who believe the move is designed to weaken the dollar – boosting US exports – and ignores the global repercussions it is likely to provoke. Already the euro is at a two-year high against the dollar.

On the eve of the summit, World Bank president Robert Zoellick said the largest economies "need pro-growth policies, structural reforms, open trade and an anti-protectionist agenda". He said that further support from governments to support growth would build confidence in private sector development.

Zoellick considers the return to growth in most developed countries to be fragile and is concerned that a slowdown next year could not only raise poverty levels in developing nations but also leave countries such as Ireland and Portugal to suffer deep cuts in wealth and social unrest.

His comments were echoed by Bank of England governor Mervyn King, who warned that deep imbalances in the global economy must be tackled for recovery to gain traction. He urged leaders at the summit to end their bickering and agree plans to maintain growth.

However, King's and Zoellick's calls for progress towards an international package of pro-growth economic and trade policies are likely to fall on deaf ears as debates are dominated by US proposals for the use of current account targets to help correct trade imbalances.

Barack Obama has argued that without an agreement to limit the surge in trade surpluses accumulated by China and Germany, the US has no option but to boost its own economy by printing money.

Brazil and Thailand, which have grown quickly since the banking crisis, are also affected and have slapped controls on foreign investment. They said they needed to prevent money pouring out of the US and artificially pushing up the price of domestic bonds, equities and property.

Obama's hand was strengthened after China published figures showing its trade surplus hit $27.15bn (£19.66bn) last month after its exports leapt 22.9% in October from a year earlier, to a total of $135.98bn.

Chancellor George Osborne has argued that while world growth remains steady and is expected to continue growing next year, Britain has an opportunity to rebalance its economy away from borrowing for consumption to export-led growth.

Economic historian Robert Skidelsky has called Osborne's plan "economically illiterate" as it relied on other countries to buy British goods without Britain returning the favour.

New financial regulations and rules governing how financial institutions should operate in the wake of the worst financial crisis since the second world war are also on the summit agenda.

Expectations were running high earlier this year that leaders would agree tough measures to prevent banks taking excessive risks and reforms to global financial institutions to limit the scope for them to go bust.

In June, the Toronto G20 summit accepted that banks should face higher capital levels than previously envisaged to protect against a Lehman-style crisis ever happening again.

But it marked a turning point after Britain joined Germany, China, Brazil and Canada to water down the timescale for implementation, leaving it to individual countries to introduce the new rules.